Something stirred in Yan Qi’s eyes. The fingertips hidden in his sleeve had already curled into a tight fist.
Chu Zhao thought the brat was looking at her strangely. Frowning, she asked in displeasure, “Had your fill of looking?”
Yan Qi gazed at her bold, arrogant features and suppressed the odd feeling in his heart. Then he glanced at Madam Chu, who was sprawled limply on the ground, and spoke in a voice that revealed no emotion.
“I came to visit the sick today, only to be treated to one spectacle after another.”
“Madam Chu” hurriedly dropped to her knees. “Y-Your Highness, forgive me… It’s this impostor…”
“Impostor?” Yan Qi repeated the word, his tone mild. “On what grounds do you call her an impostor, Madam?”
“You personally sent the Princess Regent to my residence as a bride. After I left the capital, she never once set foot outside its gates.” Yan Qi’s voice was unhurried, but every word struck “Madam Chu” in the heart like a nail. “By saying this, Duchess, are you accusing me of switching your daughter with someone else?”
As he spoke, he glanced at Chu Zhao.
This time, there was something more in his gaze.
Light and faint, like a dragonfly skimming the water.
Yet frighteningly deep.
“Madam Chu’s” face changed dramatically. She had never expected the Prince of You to react this way!
Anyone with eyes could see that Shen Zhaozhao was practically a different person now!
Could the Prince of You have discovered that she had gone to drown Shen Zhaozhao yesterday?
Had he come to the residence today not to break off the engagement, but to put her on trial?
The thought turned her blood half cold.
But “Madam Chu” couldn’t admit it.
If she did, it would all be over.
“Your Highness, Shen Zhaozhao is the child I carried for ten months and gave birth to. What mother wouldn’t recognize her own daughter?”
“Yesterday, when I visited, I realized the Princess Regent had been switched. The woman before you is absolutely not my daughter, Zhaozhao! When I saw through her yesterday, she even tried to kill me to silence me!”
“Your Highness… You saw it yourself! These injuries on my hands were inflicted by her—”
Everyone around them was shocked. Hadn’t they said the Madam had been injured and carried back to the residence yesterday because someone had tried to assassinate His Highness the Prince of You and accidentally hurt her?
How had it suddenly become the Princess Consort who injured her?
“You really do have a gift for making things up. The one who hurt you yesterday was clearly an assassin.” Chu Zhao smiled sweetly. “The Prince of You saw it with his own eyes and gave his verdict himself. You don’t get to pin that on me.”
Chu Zhao looked at the man with a faint, knowing smile, as though certain he wouldn’t expose her.
And she was right.
Yan Qi met her gaze, his eyes dark and unfathomable. “Of course. No one may slander my Princess Consort.”
Chu Zhao’s eyes narrowed slightly. Yan Fuwei, you old bastard. You’re interesting.
No one else knew of the contest hidden in their exchange of glances. To the onlookers, they seemed to be exchanging flirtatious looks.
“Madam Chu” stared in disbelief. She truly couldn’t understand why the Prince of You was siding with this impostor!
But Chu Zhao gave her no chance to say another word.
Unhurriedly, she took a step forward and planted her foot on “Madam Chu’s” shadow.
An invisible force abruptly seized “Madam Chu” by the throat, leaving her unable to speak.
As fear and shock overwhelmed her, she heard Chu Zhao say softly, “There’s no such thing as a mother who can’t recognize her own child.”
“Nor would a birth mother steal her child’s fortune and destiny to nourish someone else’s.”
“Unless, of course… that mother wasn’t the mother at all.”
Chu Zhao looked in Yan Qi’s direction and rolled her eyes as though he were in the way. She tilted her head, shifting her gaze past him to Qi Yun, who stood behind him. “You. Go inside and look. See if there are any yellow talismans or other evil objects in that room.”
Qi Yun instinctively glanced at Yan Qi. When he saw that his master had no intention of stopping her, he nodded and accepted the order.
“Yes.”
“No! You can’t! Eldest Young Lady is an innocent, unmarried girl. How can an unrelated man barge into Liu Lingyi’s bedroom?”
Nanny Zhou leapt up again, trying to stop them.
Shen Yuzhu’s face had gone deathly pale. She cried, “Eldest Sister, why must you hurt me like this?”
“What a fool. I haven’t even come after you, so why are you jumping out on your own?” Chu Zhao gave her a knowing smile. “If you’d kept quiet for now, once they found the thing, you could still have claimed you knew nothing about it.”
“Rushing to stop them like this only makes you look guilty.”
“Then again, you sleep with that thing under your pillow every night. How could you really not know? Even if you didn’t, after enjoying the favor and comforts meant for the legitimate daughter for more than ten years as a concubine-born daughter, you should have guessed something.”
With a few casual words, Chu Zhao had blocked off every escape route.
Shen Yuzhu’s face turned deathly white.
Moments later, Qi Yun strode out of the inner room, a sachet in hand and a grave look on his face.
“Your Highness, we found this beneath Second Young Lady Shen’s pillow. There’s human hair hidden inside the sachet. And there’s also this…”
It was a paper doll folded from a yellow talisman. A black cord was tied around its neck, and the person’s birth date and hour were written plainly on it.
Yan Qi picked up the doll, his expression dark and unreadable.
“These are the Princess Consort’s birth details.”
“Duke Shen’s Residence is certainly full of hidden dragons and crouching tigers!”
In an instant, “Madam Chu” and Shen Yuzhu felt as though they had fallen into an ice cellar.
It was over…
“Just a fortune-stealing talisman? Is that all?”
Like a general calling out troops, Chu Zhao pointed in turn at the spirit wall, the pond, the flower beds, and the wind chimes, her tone casual. “These are all ‘surprises’ too.”
Qi Yun took down another bronze bell and examined it closely. Then he called out, “Your Highness, the Princess Consort’s birth details are indeed engraved inside this bell too!”
“I can’t see anything unusual elsewhere, but there is definitely something wrong with that spirit wall. The carvings aren’t magpies—they’re cuckoos!”
Even Qi Yun felt a chill crawl over his scalp.
Was this something a birth mother could do? Even a stepmother might not be this vicious.
Yan Qi spat out a single word, coldly: “Tear it down!”
Qi Yun obeyed and whistled between his fingers. Dozens of black-clad figures instantly vaulted over the wall. They were the guards who had been waiting in the shadows.
The guards moved swiftly. Without a word, they began smashing and wrecking everything in the courtyard.
Chu Zhao watched it all with amused interest, then gently lifted her foot from “Madam Chu’s” shadow.
“Madam Chu” instantly regained her freedom. Forgetting all about going after Chu Zhao, she scrambled to her feet on all fours like a madwoman.
“Don’t tear it down! Don’t—”
“Stop! Make them stop!”
“Your Highness… Your Highness, it’s all a misunderstanding. I did have these things arranged, but not to harm the Princess Consort. I did it to help her!”
“Madam Chu” clenched her jaw and twisted the truth. “I wanted to steal Shen Yuzhu’s fate to help the Princess Consort! Look, the Princess Consort is clear-minded now. These… these things borrow Shen Yuzhu’s fortune!”
The brazen attempt to turn everything upside down made Chu Zhao laugh aloud.
“Wonderful. Simply wonderful. You certainly have a silver tongue.” She tilted her head, amusement filling her eyes. “So, according to you, I… the Princess Consort should thank you?”
She paused, then added, “If this fortune was borrowed, shouldn’t it be returned? How could I take advantage of Shen Yuzhu?”
“Someone, start a fire. Burn everything engraved with my birth details.”
Yan Qi raised a hand, and Qi Yun immediately carried out the order.
“Madam Chu” felt her vision go black. She screamed and tried to throw herself forward, but the guards stopped her at once.
The flames roared. Everything engraved with Shen Zhaozhao’s birth details was thrown into the blazing fire.
The firelight brought Shen Yuzhu back to her senses. Her face was deathly pale, and a bone-chilling cold shot from the soles of her feet straight to her scalp.
She didn’t know what would happen next, but a sense of dread enveloped her.
“No… This has nothing to do with me. I’m innocent. I don’t know anything…”
“I don’t know anything!”
Through the flames, her gaze met Chu Zhao’s.
Beneath the roaring fire, the woman’s dark eyes were black as an abyss, and like a mirror reflecting Shen Yuzhu’s exposed ugliness.
Suddenly, screams rang out all around them.
The servants of Duke Shen’s Residence were all staring at Shen Yuzhu in terror.
Confused, Shen Yuzhu lowered her head, feeling warmth at the tip of her nose.
She touched it—and her fingers were covered in blood.
She trembled with fear.
“Yuzhu… Aah! My Yuzhu!” “Madam Chu” crawled over to Shen Yuzhu on all fours. “You can’t be hurt! You can’t let anything happen to you…”
Her tender, devoted-mother act now completely contradicted her own words.
Who could believe that she had stolen Shen Yuzhu’s fortune to help Shen Zhaozhao?
Everyone remembered Chu Zhao’s earlier words: “Unless that mother wasn’t the mother at all.”
“Second Young Lady must be getting what she deserves… So it really was her stealing Eldest Young Lady’s destiny…”
“I’m completely confused. Why would Madam do this? Eldest Young Lady is her own daughter.”
At that moment, an old nanny with one blind eye rushed out.
Filthy from head to toe, she threw herself at “Madam Chu,” clawing and striking her as she shouted,
“Impostor! Fake! Get off my Madam! Evil spirit! Liu Yuniang, you evil spirit!”
The crowd erupted.
“Isn’t that Nanny Xu? She was Madam’s wet nurse and came with her when she married from her family’s home!”
“I heard she’d gone mad and Madam had locked her up… Why is she calling Madam Liu Yuniang?”
“Liu Yuniang? Isn’t that Second Young Lady’s birth mother? She died more than ten years ago…”
A chill ran down everyone’s spines. They looked at one another, each seized by the same utterly absurd thought.
Especially the older servants in the household.
Everyone knew that “Madam Chu” had been like a different person in earlier years. Before she gave birth to Eldest Young Lady, their Duchess had been refined and well-mannered, elegant and dignified—a celebrated virtuous wife in the capital.
But after she gave birth to Eldest Young Lady—or, more precisely, after Eldest Young Lady turned three—the Duchess’s temperament changed completely.
She became extremely harsh with the servants, beating and scolding them at every turn. Her speech and manner grew vulgar and petty.
And Concubine Liu, who had come from a brothel, had died in childbirth after giving birth to Second Young Lady around that same time.
Could it be…
“Aah! Get away from her!” Shen Yuzhu screamed in a breakdown, helping “Madam Chu” push Nanny Xu away.
The old woman was about to fall backward into the fire when Chu Zhao hurried forward and caught her by the back.
Another hand reached her a moment later. The man’s palm was callused, and it landed squarely over the back of Chu Zhao’s hand.
Chu Zhao and Yan Qi’s eyes met for an instant.
Yan Qi withdrew his hand, and Chu Zhao helped the old woman to her side.
Almost at the same time, a demonic wind suddenly rose, sending sparks flying. A burning scrap shot straight into Shen Yuzhu’s eye.
“Aah! My eye! My eye!”
Shen Yuzhu clutched her eye and rolled across the ground.
“Yuzhu! My child!”
“Madam Chu”—or rather, Liu Yuniang—wailed and threw herself at her. Pointing at Chu Zhao, she cursed in a shrill voice, “Evil spirit! You’re an evil spirit! You’re not Shen Zhaozhao at all!”
Chu Zhao curled her lips and leisurely savored the sight of her anguish.
“Your child is hurt, and you feel the pain in your heart, don’t you?”
She smiled without moving her lips, yet the words that followed drifted clearly into Liu Yuniang and Shen Yuzhu’s ears, like a demon’s whisper.
—Don’t be in such a hurry.
—Your retribution has only just begun.
The courtyard was still in chaos when a figure hurried in with several people in tow, his voice full of anger. “What on earth is going on here?!”
It was Duke Shen, who had rushed back specially. Seeing him, Madam Chu crawled toward him in her wretched state as though she had spotted a lifeline. “Husband! Husband, hurry and save Yuzhu!”
“Shen Zhaozhao is possessed! She’s going to kill our Yuzhu!”
At her words, Duke Shen looked toward Chu Zhao and blurted out, “You wretch! What have you done to your younger sister?!”
“Brat!”
“Idiot.”
The two insults rang out at the same time. Chu Zhao looked in surprise at Yan Qi, who had spoken. What was he butting in for?
Duke Shen was also stunned by the two curses. He stared at Yan Qi in astonishment. It wasn’t that he hadn’t noticed Yan Qi; he simply hadn’t recognized him at first glance.
Although His Highness the Prince of You had won glorious victories in battle and his fame had long since reached the capital, most people there still thought of him as the sickly prince he had been five years ago.
Duke Shen could hardly connect the imposing, dignified Prince of You before him with the sickly Yan Qi of five years earlier. It was the same face, yet he seemed to have been reborn.
“Your subject pays his respects to Your High—”
“Duke Shen is not old enough to be going deaf and blind,” Yan Qi said mildly, his words making Duke Shen’s face flush red.
He was just about to speak when a flash of silver appeared: a sharp longsword was already pressed against his neck.
Duke Shen’s knees nearly gave way. Meeting the man’s haughty gaze as he held the sword, he swallowed instinctively. “Your High—Your Highness…”
Yan Qi slowly turned his head. “Your wife was replaced right under your nose. You let your concubine’s daughter plot against your legitimate daughter, and you turned right and wrong upside down, unable to tell black from white.”
His voice grew colder. The sword resting against Duke Shen’s neck pressed down harder and harder, until Duke Shen dropped to his knees with a thud.
“Was this how you all used to bully my Princess Consort?”
“Your Highness…I don’t understand…”
“So you aren’t deaf and blind. You’re just pretending not to hear or see.”
A hand came to rest on Yan Qi’s sword hand. Rather than stopping him, it pushed the blade several inches farther into the flesh of Duke Shen’s neck.
Everyone around them stared, dumbstruck, not daring even to breathe.
Looking down at Duke Shen, Chu Zhao said, “You’re a duke, and you’ve been married for more than a decade. How could you not notice that the wife who bore your children had gone from a refined young lady to someone with the manners of a courtesan?”
Duke Shen glared at Chu Zhao, shocked and furious, his eyes betraying the embarrassment and anger of a man exposed. “You…you’re not stupid anymore?”
“Surprise!” Chu Zhao said, gripping Yan Qi’s hand and guiding the sword he held in a level slash.
“Ah!!!” Duke Shen jerked backward in terror. His lower back gave a sharp crack, and he collapsed onto the ground in a kneeling sprawl, his face twisted in pain. The sword’s edge had sliced apart his hair bun, and a few strands drifted in front of his eyes.
His whole body was trembling.
Wretched girl… That wretched girl! If he’d been even a moment slower, he’d have been decapitated!
“Oh dear, Your Highness the Prince of You, what are you doing? He is your father-in-law, after all. You can’t just cut him down like that.” Chu Zhao lied straight-faced. “Good thing I stopped you, or you’d have made a terrible mistake.”
Everyone thought: Is that really what happened? So it was the Prince of You who made the move?
Yan Qi raised an eyebrow, his gaze full of meaning. After a moment, he said each word deliberately, “My Princess Consort is quite right.”
He tossed the longsword to Qi Yun, then swept a cold gaze over everyone in the courtyard. “Duke Shen failed to keep order in his household. A vicious woman usurped the identity of the Duchess and, together with her daughter by a concubine, used sorcery to harm my Princess Consort.”
“Within three days, give me and my Princess Consort an answer we find satisfactory.”
His gaze returned to Duke Shen. “The capital has no shortage of dukes.”
Chu Zhao gave Yan Qi an approving look. Yes, this grandson’s way of handling things suited her just fine.
Yan Qi happened to meet her gaze.
His Highness the Prince of You fell silent. That disrespectful look…why did it seem as if she were looking at her grandson?